What Arizona State coach Bobby Hurley said at Big 12 men's basketball media day
Despite being picked to finish 12th in their first season in the Big 12, Bobby Hurley is "excited" about Arizona State's chances this season.
The Sun Devils enter the 2024-25 season with low expectations from the national media, but Hurley knows he has a special group.
"We're excited about our first season in the Big 12," Hurley said at Big 12 men's basketball media day on Wednesday. "In my opinion it's the best basketball league in the country; loaded up top and really good depth of really quality programs. Excited to experience all that. Just new places, places I haven't been, haven't coached at, different areas of the country.
"We worked extremely hard in the offseason to rebuild, reconstruct our roster and put ourselves in the best position to be very competitive this year. I like what I'm seeing in practice. I think we've upgraded our talent level significantly. I'm excited to see where we stand. We hand a nice closed scrimmage over the weekend. We'll travel this weekend to play at Duke on Sunday, and obviously we're inside two weeks to our first game. Excited about everything. I said excited a lot."
Hurley added five-star forward Jaydan Quaintance and five-star guard Joson Sanon in the offseason. He also added a ton of talent through the transfer portal, including Ball State forward Basheer Jihad, Ole Miss guard Austin Nunez and USC forward Brandon Gardner.
Here is what Hurley said about his 2024-25 Arizona State team at Big 12 Media Day in Kansas City:
Hurley on 5-star freshman Jayden Quaintance:
"Jayden is special. What he's going to be a couple years from now is scary because he's already so advanced for his age, turning 17 in July. He'll be one of the youngest players in college basketball, but you look at him physically, he's prepared to compete at this level.
"His makeup is outstanding. His habits are tremendous for a young person. He's a worker. He's in the gym all the time. He's immensely talented. He can face up and dribble the ball. He's got some finesse to his game in addition to the physicality that he brings. He's got a motor that is as good as any that I've ever coached. I always prided myself when I played on being able to sustain minutes and to be able to be a guy that could play 35 to 40 minutes without getting tired, and Jayden is far superior than I ever was in that regard or anybody I've coached. He just never stops. He's relentless and goes after the basketball, plays with tremendous energy and passion. Very fortunate to have him in the program because he could easily be in a high school classroom somewhere right now."
Hurley on preparing for how physical the Big 12 will be:
"Knowing that we're going to the Big 12, reputation about it being a very physical league ... I wanted to stick to what our style was gonna be. I wanted to be unique. I want us to play Arizona State basketball. I don't wanna try and be better than some of the top programs that have been great rebounding programs or tremendous defensive programs. I'm not sure that I could in a few months become a better rebounding team than Houston. So I'm just gonna try and be really good at what we're capable of being good at.
"We've repaired our front court. It's probably the deepest perimeter that I've had since I've been at Arizona State. ... The depth of players that I could put on the floor, I have a pretty strong hand there. It's a good mixture of experienced guys, of returning players and incoming freshmen. I really like what we have right now."
Hurley on preparing for the daunting Big 12 travel schedule:
"We tried to do that already. We had a closed scrimmage on the road. We're traveling to Duke this weekend. We want to get our players accustomed for these road trips. We're playing four nonconference home games. I'm not sure any other power conference team would play that little amount of home games. We should be battle tested on neutral sites and on road games. Certainly you can look at the Duke game this weekend and then you can move right to game number three at Gonzaga. We've put ourselves in some challenging situations against some really good teams on the road. Hopefully that will pay dividends as we hit our conference schedule."
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Ben Sherman has been covering the sports world for most of his journalism career, including 17 years with The Oregonian/OregonLive. One of his favorite memories was covering the 1999 Fiesta Bowl - the first BCS National Championship Game - at Sun Devil Stadium.